


Hate That You Know Me

by conniptionns



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: M/M, athletic trainer AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 08:12:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14101158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conniptionns/pseuds/conniptionns
Summary: au where Neil is a professional exy player and Andrew is the unfortunateson of a bitchathletic trainer in charge of patching him up.





	Hate That You Know Me

Most days, Neil began or ended practice with some sort of injury.

The Blue Devils were having a scrimmage, offense against defense, and it quickly went from play to war. Everyone was out for blood and no one was sure why they were taking it so seriously. Neil figured it was because the rookies, who made up one of the scrimmage teams, were a bunch of little pricks.

If Neil came away with an injury, it would be worth it if he got to take one of those little assholes down with him. He had his eyes on Reyes.

He was an absolute glutton for punishment.

Standing toe-to-toe with Victoria Reyes all practice had slowly made his patience dwindle. At one point in time, Neil would have been afraid to play rough with a girl, but if his mother taught him anything it was that women could take a hit and keep on moving until they couldn’t.

Neil didn’t want to bench her for the season. He just wanted to keep her on her toes. He had an excuse, too, the little harpy love goading him, so in his opinion, she was asking for the rough check.

“Josten!” Reyes screeched before she turned toward the sideline. “Coach, call foul!”

“Aw, Tori, do you need to be subbed out?” Neil teased cruelly. “We’re in the big leagues now.”

“Fuck you.”

Neil always had a bad habit of talking himself into situations that he couldn’t get himself out of. Most recently, he’d had a lot of issues with not getting mouthy with some of the asshole rookies on the team. Case in point: Victoria Reyes.

A fair amount of fights were started by Neil’s mouth, to be sure, but there were also a hefty number of fights that were started by his racquet. Both in and out of practice, Neil wasn’t afraid to high stick a bitch if the card was worth it.

“God, I’m going to wipe the floor with your face, Neil,” she hissed.

Or in this case, low sticking.

Neil swung his racquet in a neat arc, sweeping her legs out from underneath her. It was a low-blow, but it just so happened, that a lot of the time, the card was worth it.

The whistle blew a sharp note and the assistant coach was running onto the court.

“Josten! Foul. What the hell man, this is a scrimmage. I mean it’s not exactly no-contact, but there’s no reason to knock Reyes to the floor like that.”

Neil only gave a sheepish shrug in response.

Victoria stood and lifted the faceguard on her helmet as she yanked her pants leg up to check where the impact with the floor was the worst.

She sneered at Neil when she saw that there was an ugly bruise blossoming.

“You’re dead, Neil. Do you know how hard it is to bruise a brown girl, you pasty Irish fucker?”

“Apparently not that hard, Toria.”

“I’m going to break your face.”

Neil didn’t realize that she meant that literally.

* * *

 

A good portion of Neil’s time in the stadium was spent smack inside Andrew’s little room.

Andrew Minyard was the team athletic trainer for Neil’s team, and was more of a no nonsense asshle than Neil. So, he wasn’t impressed by Neil’s ability to run into fists once a week.

Neil also had to take ice baths fairly often because he was fond of pushing himself harder than anyone else on the team, but stripping down in front of the team wasn’t something that Neil did.

The first time that Andrew told him he had to take an ice bath, Neil immediately bristled. Logically, he knew that he could keep some of his clothes on, but it was hard enough dealing with the stares directed toward the scars he couldn’t hide.

He wasn’t exactly interested in letting it be known that he was a patchwork of ruined, pink skin where it should be a golden tan; shiny and smooth where there should be hair.

Andrew had immediately sensed Neil’s tension and left the room for a supply run for something Neil didn’t even hear him mention.

For the duration of all his ice baths from then on, no one came into Andrew’s room.

* * *

 

Neil wasn’t benched for the scrimmage, but after a stern warning, Neil was feeling slightly better about playing nice. Besides, he had already knocked Victoria on her ass once.

The checks got rougher, but Victoria was younger that Neil and not as battle-hardened. He felt it but it wasn’t enough to send him sprawling and she knew it.

“Fuck you.”

“Tori,” Neil gasped dramatically. “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” he asked, voice high and breathy.

“I’m going to make you regret ever speaking to me,” she grunted as their sticks clashed.

“I already do.” He was bored. It was like a fuzzy bumblebee bumping into him over and over again.

* * *

 

Andrew’s room wasn’t exactly party central to begin with, but there was typically a steady trickle of people coming in to get athletic tape or over the counter painkillers. Some people even came into Andrew’s room for silence. Andrew wasn’t one to waste words and if anyone needed five minutes of silence from the rowdy locker room, Andrew’s room was where they went.

Neil always finished his ice baths and left without seeing Andrew.

The clinical way that Andrew dealt with Neil’s growing collection of scars was interesting. Most people that got a glimpse asked Neil hundreds of questions.

All Andrew did was run them over with an intense eye, once, then never looked at them again.

Neil hadn’t felt like an actual person in so long.

They started to have conversations while Andrew was patching him up. Most of them were about how fucking stupid Neil was or that he was just trying to keep Big Pharma in business by getting busted up every other day.

Neil might have been more interested in Andrew than he’d ever been interested in anyone else before, but that was a bitch because he’d never been interested in anyone like that before.

His roommate Matt encouraged him to ask Andrew out, but Neil wasn’t even certain that he swung at all and doesn’t know how you could tell if you did. How would he even know if Andrew was interested?

So he ignored it. That was healthy, right? Because he did it with everything else, too.

* * *

 

Neil was considering googling “How to ask out your cute AT” when he got high sticked in the face and got a bloody nose.

Neil definitely didn’t expect Victoria to have the balls to go after him so blatantly, but Neil guessed he deserved it. He had been sort of an asshole. Besides, he didn’t think it was broken, but noses always bled like a bitch.

“Victoria!”

“Sorry, Coach!”

His coach sent him off the court, and Neil found himself in Andrew’s little room.

Andrew was wrapping an ankle when he caught sight of Neil.

“Don’t get your blood on the floor. I literally just mopped, and you know how much I hate mopping.”

“Was that more or less than how much you hate me?”

“Less.”

Neil grinned, exposing a set of bloody teeth to Andrew.

Andrew huffed and looked up at the woman whose ankle he had finished wrapping, intending to scare her off, but she just looked between the two of them as she hopped off the table. Before she walked out the door, she turned to Neil, who wasn’t even aware she existed anymore, and said, “One day, you’re going to have to tell me how you won Minyard over with a bloody nose.”

Andrew looked like he was considering double homicide, but the woman was unfazed and continued walking out the door.

“You like me?”

“I hate you.”

“Does that mean if I asked you out for coffee, you would go?”

“You don’t even drink coffee, Neil.”

“Yeah, so? You do.”

“I know six different ways to immediately kill you where you stand without you feeling a thing.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes.”


End file.
